This invention relates to the cleaning of deposits from the walls of a refractory furnace. More particularly, the invention relates to a device containing rotating scrapers to remove deposits from the furnace walls.
Refractory furnaces such as coke, ovens, carbon baking furnaces and the like require periodic cleaning to remove deposits of carbon and other materials on the furnace walls. This can be done manually after first cooling the furnace by a crew of laborers who chip and scrape at the deposits, usually with hand tools. The work is tedious, dirty and, to some extent, a health hazard due to the extreme dust conditions which necessitate the wearing of protective devices such as goggles and masks.
The desire to automate this cleaning operation has lead to the proposing of elaborate devices which attempt to duplicate the manual effort to remove as much of the deposits as possible. Unfortunately, elaborate schemes such as, for example, proposed in Evrard et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,279,052, can result in the creation of machinery maintenance problems which merely shift the manual labor to the cleaning, maintaining and repairing of equipment. This patent discloses the use of a plurality of chain-driven rotating screw-type cutters against each of two opposing walls of a furnace. The rotating scrapers are linked by a chain to a rotation source and are connected together by universal joints. The use of a plurality of scrapers is said to be necessary in the event that the built-up deposits are thicker on some areas of the walls.
While the described device will apparently permit automation of the cleaning job, the motors, chains and universal joints are all susceptible to maintenance problems because of the carbon deposits generated during the cleaning process. Furthermore, the screw-type scraper blades may have to be periodically replaced as the scraping surface is worn away.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a device with a minimum of moving parts exposed to dirt and dust conditions. It would also be desirable to provide a scraping apparatus means not necessitating complete removal for maintenance or renewing of the cutting surface.